Subjective well-being (SWB) is a concept of well-being (happiness) that focuses on evaluations from the perspective of the people whose lives are being evaluated rather than from an objective viewpoint. SWB measures often rely on self-reports, but that does not make them SWB measures. Objective measures of wellbeing are also sometimes measured with self-reports and SWB can also be measured with informant ratings.
Ed Diener defined SWB in terms of three indicators of subjective well-being: frequent positive affect, infrequent negative affect, and cognitive evaluations such as life satisfaction.Tov & Diener (2013), Subjective Well-Being. Research Collection School of Social Sciences. Paper 1395. https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1395/
SWB includes two different subjective measures of well-being that are based on different definitions of happiness. Experiences of positive affect (mood, emotions), and experiences of negative affect (mood, emotions) can be used to create a measure of the amount of positive and negative affect in people's lives. These hedonic balance scores measure subjective wellbeing from a hedonistic perspective that define happiness as high PA and low NA. Life-satisfaction is based on a subjective view of happiness. Accordingly, there is no objective way to define happiness and people have to define it for themselves. They then use their own definition of happiness to evaluate their actual. Therefore SWB is not a definition of happiness. Rather it is a label for two definitions of happiness, a hedonistic one and a subjective one. Both are based on subjective experiences, but the subjective experiences are different. Hedonism relies on aggregation of momentary affective experiences. Life-satisfaction relies on the recall and evaluation of past experiences.
Although SWB tends to be stable over the time and is strongly related to personality traits, the emotional component of SWB can be impacted by situations; for example, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, lowered emotional well-being by 74%. There is evidence that health and SWB may mutually influence each other, as good health tends to be associated with greater happiness, and a number of studies have found that positive emotions and optimism can have a beneficial influence on health.
Construction of SWB Diener argued that the various components of SWB represent distinct constructs that need to be understood separately, even though they are closely related. Hence, SWB may be considered "a general area of scientific interest rather than a single specific construct". Due to the specific focus on the subjective aspects of well-being, definitions of SWB typically exclude objective conditions such as material conditions or health, although these can influence ratings of SWB. Definitions of SWB therefore focus on how a person evaluates his/her own life, including emotional experiences of pleasure versus pain in response to specific events and cognitive evaluations of what a person considers a good life. Components of SWB relating to affect include positive affect (experiencing pleasant emotions and moods) and low negative affect (experiencing unpleasant, distressing emotions and moods), as well as "overall affect" or "hedonic balance", defined as the overall equilibrium between positive and negative affect, and usually measured as the difference between the two. High positive affect and low negative affect are often highly correlated, but not always.
Components of SWB There are three components of SWB: affect (hedonic measures), life satisfaction (cognitive measures), and eudaimonia (a sense of meaning and purpose). Current research recognizes the importance of accurately assessing SWB within a society by focusing on how each component of SWB impacts the individual.
Affect Affect refers to the emotions, moods, and feelings a person has. These can be all positive, all negative, or a combination of both positive and negative. Some research shows also that feelings of reward are separate from positive and negative affect. Research also recognizes that when evaluating subjective well-being, approaches to affect can be interchangeable between children and adults.
Life satisfaction Life satisfaction (global judgments of one's lifeDaniel Kahneman has said that "Life satisfaction is connected to a large degree to social yardsticks–achieving goals, meeting expectations." https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-why-nobel-prize-winner-daniel-kahneman-gave-up-on-happiness-1.6528513 https://qz.com/1503207/a-nobel-prize-winning-psychologist-defines-happiness-versus-satisfaction/ ) and satisfaction with specific life domains (e.g. work satisfaction) are considered cognitive components of SWB. The term "happiness" is sometimes used in regards to SWB and has been defined variously as "satisfaction of desires and goals" (therefore related to life satisfaction), as a "preponderance of positive over negative affect" (therefore related to emotional components of SWB), as "contentment", and as a "consistent, optimistic mood state" and may imply an affective evaluation of one's life as a whole. Life satisfaction can also be known as the "stable" component in one's life. Affective concepts of SWB can be considered in terms of momentary emotional states as well as in terms of longer-term moods and tendencies (i.e. how much positive and/or negative affect a person generally experiences over any given period of time). Life satisfaction and in some research happiness are typically considered over long durations, up to one's lifetime. "Quality of life" has also been studied as a conceptualization of SWB. Although its exact definition varies, it is usually measured as an aggregation of well-being across several life domains and may include both subjective and objective components.
Eudaimonia Eudaimonic measures seek to quantify traits like virtue and wisdom as well as concepts related to fulfilling our potential such as meaning, purpose, and flourishing. Eudaimonic measures are often regarded as a core component of SWB, particularly in the field of positive psychology. However, it is unclear whether measures of meaning are really measures of wellbeing and little data has been collected on them. It is difficult to prove that eudaimonic measures of SWB are reliable, and more research is needed to increase the reliability of research methods which utilize this component of subjective well-being. As interdisciplinary research becomes more commonplace, a stronger understanding of previously overlooked eudaimonic experiences may arise from more reliable research methods. The importance of assessing an individual's eudaimonia in understanding their subjective well-being can be seen as early as in research with elementary school students.
Measurement Life satisfaction and Affect balance are generally measured separately and independently. Life satisfaction is generally measured using a self-report method. A common measurement for life satisfaction is questionnaires. In SWB research, evaluating life satisfaction is the most common practice. Affective balance is also generally measured using a self-report method. An example of a measurement of affective balance is the PANAS (Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule). Sometimes a single SWB question attempts to capture an overall picture.See e.g. "The most basic way of measuring it involves asking individuals how they feel about their lives - known as subjective well being. A typical question is, "Taking all things together, how happy are you?" - with possible answers from 0 (extremely unhappy) to 10 (extremely happy)." Can Happiness be Measured?, http://www.actionforhappiness.org/why-happiness For example, the World Happiness Report uses a Cantril ladder survey, in which respondents are asked to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a 10, and the worst possible life being a 0, and are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale.
The issue with such measurements of life satisfaction and affective balance is that they are self-reports. The problem with self-reports is that the participants may be lying or at least not telling the whole truth on the questionnaires. Participants may be lying or holding back from revealing certain things because they are either embarrassed or they may be filling in what they believe the researcher wants to see in the results. To gain more accurate results, other methods of measurement have been used to determine one's SWB.
Another way to corroborate or confirm that the self-report results are accurate is through informant reports. Informant reports are given to the participant's closest friends and family and they are asked to fill out either a survey or a form asking about the participants mood, emotions, and overall lifestyle. The participant may write in the self-report that they are very happy, however that participant's friends and family record that he/she is always depressed. This would obviously be a contradiction in results which would ultimately lead to inaccurate results. Informant reports are found to be ineffective to determine the subjective well-being of children.
Another method of gaining a better understanding of the true results is through ESM, or the Experience Sampling Method. In this measure, participants are given a beeper/pager that will randomly ring throughout the day. Whenever the beeper/pager sounds, the participant will stop what he/she is doing and record the activity they are currently engaged in and their current mood and feelings. Tracking this over a period of a week or a month will give researchers a better understanding of the true emotions, moods, and feelings the participant is experiencing, and how these factors interact with other thoughts and behaviors. Measuring an individual's mood over time may also be a reliable indicator of how their SWB is influenced on a day-to-day basis. A third measurement to ensure validity is the Day Reconstruction Method. In this measure, participants fill out a diary of the previous days' activities. The participant is then asked to describe each activity and provide a report of how they were feeling, what mood they were experiencing, and any emotions that surfaced. Thus to ensure valid results, a researcher may tend to use self-reports along with another form of measurement mentioned above. Someone with a high level of life satisfaction and a positive affective balance is said to have a high level of SWB.
The research into the SWB of blue-collar immigrant employees offers an alternative to the self-report method by instead measuring resource loss and gain. In research showing how cognitive, affective, or eudemonic components of SWB relate to consumption, it becomes clear that eudemonia needs to be measured differently than affect or cognition when evaluating an individual's subjective happiness. This research also highlights that an individual's affect can be used to measure SWB in the short-term, while SWB in the long-term can be measured through the Cantril ladder, life satisfaction, or eudemonia. Research into the relationship between the components of SWB and consumption highlights the positive impact relational and experiential consumption have on an individual's SWB, while clarifying how materialistic consumption prevents an individual from experiencing those positive effects. Research limitations that arise when measuring a person's affect include a narrow focus only on the short term, while limitations from measuring life satisfaction can be overly broad in the scope of the results.
Theories Theories of the causes of SWB tend to emphasize either top-down or bottom-up influences.
Top-down perspective